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Janice

The Tony Awards celebrate Broadway, but movie stars including Amy Schumer, Tina Fey, Andrew Garfield, and Denzel Washington have all been nominated this year. You can watch the show on CBS on Sunday, June 10, hosted by the talented and charming duo of Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles. Here’s my inside scoop on what to expect in the major categories.

Best Musical

Who Will Win: The Band’s Visit

My Favorite Underdog: SpongeBob SquarePants

The Goliaths in this category include some familiar names—the Disney-produced Frozen, Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants and Tina Fey’s Mean Girls. But the giant killer will likely be a small musical called The Band’s Visit—a lovely show about an Egyptian band that mistakenly lands in a bleak Israeli town. Its brilliance comes as lonely people try to connect, including the band’s leader played by the fabulous Tony Shalhoub (of TV’s Monk and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) and the glorious Katrina Lenk as the local café owner. The music is haunting, the performances emotional and real.

The most unexpected delight among the other shows is SpongeBob SquarePants, a smart and engaging adaptation of the Nickelodeon cartoon. The songs are great, the staging clever, and the whole production is drenched in its own kind of grown-up creativity. It may not grab the Tony, but it’s definitely a winner.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is so extraordinarily good that the five hour show (divided into two parts) just flies by. Lots of other things fly around the stage, too. You don’t have to be a huge fan of the books and movies to get immediately involved in the story of grown-up Harry (played by Jamie Clark) who now has a son of his own attending Hogwarts. The plot is clever and the staging endlessly fun to watch.

In Farinelli and the King, the always-amazing Mark Rylance (who won an Oscar for Bridge of Spies) played a mad monarch who could only be calmed by the singing of the countertenor Farinelli. Listening to brilliant opera star Iestyn Davies and watching the ranting Rylance, who is never less than thrilling, made you almost forget that the play itself wasn’t as good as the actors.

Rogers and Hammerstein’s Carousel has great music but an uncomfortable story line. I was particularly worried how it would hold up in the #MeToo era—but this fabulous revival gave me a whole new perspective on the show. The attraction between Billy Bigelow (Joshua Henry) and Julie Jordan (Jessie Mueller) was so powerful that it was almost palpable, and their love story suddenly made sense. The stars’ extraordinary voices made the familiar songs—like the romantic ballad, “If I Loved You”—more potent than ever. A great supporting cast and superbly choreographed dancing made the whole show feel fresh.

For sheer delight at the theater, its hard to beat the revival of Once on This Island, starring young and vibrant Hailey Kilgore. The story of diversity, overcoming prejudice and living the life you want has never felt more relevant than in this fast-moving and colorful production.

Best Revival of a Play

Who Will Win: Angels in America

My Favorite Underdog: Travesties

The seven-plus hours of Angels in America are so knockout brilliant that other shows that might have gotten attention in another year don’t have a chance. Lobby Hero had big-name stars including Chris Evans (who played Captain America in the Marvel movies) and Michael Cera (Juno) while The Iceman Cometh was led by Denzel Washington. But it was the wildly creative production of Tom Stoppard’s Travesties that had me leaving the theater smiling at the sheer intellectual power and giddiness onstage. The fast-paced show focuses on James Joyce, Lenin and a Dadaist poet who are all in Zurich at the same time—and then throws in a twist of Oscar Wilde. I probably didn’t understand it all, but I loved its originality and a brilliant cast that took enormous pleasure in showing off Stoppard’s sheer genius.

Best Actress in a Musical

Who Will Win: Katrina Lenk

My Favorite Underdog: Jessie Mueller

As a café owner in a forgotten town, Katrina Lenk in The Band’s Visit manages to be sultry, world-weary and all-knowing. You desperately want her to find love and a new life—but you know she never will. Hailey Kilgore is lovely in Once On This Island and Taylor Louderman is perfect as the Queen Bee who eventually gets stung in Mean Girls. (She deserves a Tony just for fitting into those tight white pants.) Jessie Mueller, who seems to get a Tony nomination every time she steps on stage, brings power and purpose to Carousel, giving us a new view of the violence that occurs. “Until you look at the darkness, you can’t see the light,” she said in an interview the day after the Tony nominations. “We don’t pretend bad things don’t happen, but we see them with open eyes.” Her performance isn’t just filled with light—it glows.

Best Actor in a Musical

Who Will Win: Ethan Slater

My Favorite Underdog: Harry Hadden-Paton

It would be great to declare a four-way tie in this category and send all the nominees home with a Tony. Tony Shalhoub’s upright Egyptian is nothing short of heartbreaking in The Band’s Visit, and Joshua Henry is powerful and magnetic and real as Billy Bigelow in Carousel, even bringing some meaning to the often confusing second act. I particularly loved Harry Hadden-Paton as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. The director, Bartlett Sher, talked about how he wanted to make the play more relevant to the moment—but in truth, his Eliza isn’t very different from the versions played by Audrey Hepburn and Julie Andrews. (And written with great strength by George Bernard Shaw.) Hadden-Paton, on the other hand, makes Henry Higgins his own. He’s not sexist so much as obsessed, unsure how emotions fit into his plan. Oh, and he sings much better than Rex Harrison.

But ultimately it’s Ethan Slater, playing the title character in SpongeBob SquarePants, who is deliciously brilliant, creating a real character from a sketchy cartoon and making his positive message seem meaningful rather than sappy. Slater spent six years creating the role, starting when he was an undergraduate at Vassar. And it’s hard to imagine anyone else who could be quite as good.

You can’t watch Glenda Jackson in Three Tall Women without thinking—that’s the legendary Glenda Jackson! Every movement she makes and expression that crosses her face reminds you that this is what a great actress looks like. Jackson hasn’t acted in a while. After winning two Oscars, she was elected to Britain’s House of Commons and focused on politics for more than two decades. Seeing her onstage is a rare thrill.

The other actresses in the category are less than half her age and all have big careers ahead. Condola Rashad, always luminous, was a strong Joan of Arc in Saint Joan and Lauren Ridloff, a deaf actress appearing on Broadway for the first time, was riveting as a young woman who uses American Sign Language but falls in love with the teacher who wants her to speak. The biggest surprise was Amy Schumer. Playing the kooky Corky in Steve Martin’s Meteor Shower, she was both funny and real in portraying a woman committed to making a marriage work. Funny, smart and committed, Schumer brought depth to a shallowly written play. (Steve Martin is usually much better.) Schumer is great in movies and TV—but I’d love to see her back on Broadway soon.

Best Actor in a Play

Who Will Win: Andrew Garfield

My Favorite Underdog: Jamie Parker

Playing Prior Walter in Angels in America, a gay man of thirty battling death, Garfield is riveting and real. Even in the scenes that require him to be over-the-top, his humanity shines through. His battle against loneliness and his fight not just to live but to be alive is gut-wrenching. If you know Garfield only as Spider-Man, it’s a thrill to watch him in this devastating, nuanced, and ultimately triumphant role.

The rest of the category is also strong with Mark Rylance, Tom Hollander, and Denzel Washington all giving award-worthy performances. But special kudos to Jamie Parker who makes the grown-up Harry Potter exactly what you would want him to be. In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parker lets us see both the pleasures and pressures of being the boy who did not die. As he struggles to be a good dad to his own son now at Hogwarts, he shows that the real magic of life is accepting where you are—and trying to make it better.

AMG/Parade Digital

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